David Piontek:  

Life Was graduated from USNA in 1981 with a USMC commission, transferred back to USN in 1983 to attend flight school and received Naval Flight Officer wings in 1984. It was during flight school that Jesus first truly became my Lord and my God in a way that until then I had not known was even possible. He used the one thing that mattered more to me than anything else (flying) to make Himself known to me in a real, living, and personal way, showing me that I could know and have assurance of eternal life in heaven now by trusting in Him and the price He paid for me on the cross, and that there is no other name under heaven by which one must be saved from sin and its direct consequence, death. Under His protection and guidance, I then made one Western Pacific/Indian Ocean deployment flying F-14's as a RIO (like "Goose" in the movie Top Gun) in the VF-111 Sundowners Fighter Squadron aboard the USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) in '86-87 with port calls in Hawaii, Philippines, Korea, Singapore, Diego Garcia, Kenya, and Perth, Australia. Got out of the service after instructor duty with the VT-10 Cosmic Cats in Pensacola, FL in 1992 a...Expand for more